


Oleander

by charliewalkertexasranger



Category: Scream (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Canon Gay Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Car Sex, Hand Jobs, M/M, Marijuana, Mutual Masturbation, One Shot, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Unrequited Love, i know u wanna see geeks fuckin but this aint smut u horndogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 08:05:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15681375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charliewalkertexasranger/pseuds/charliewalkertexasranger
Summary: I think it's just because he's the president of Cinema Club and not me, but I want to be him.But I also want to be with him, and it's something I can't quite begin to come to terms with.





	Oleander

**Author's Note:**

> i finished this literally three hours before school starts and i haven't played with fire like this since i decided to publicly post a fic encouraging mickey/charlie

I think it's just because he's the president of Cinema Club and not me, but I want to be him.

But I also want to be _with_  him, and it's something I can't quite begin to come to terms with. I mean, I'm jealous, if anything, but I'm torn on whether I should be. I'm like... the most divided person I know, because he might be my best friend, but I have to admit that I resent him. It's why I started the whole webcast thing in the first place. He was always getting more attention, because he was the one who held Cinema Club in a hypnotic grip whenever he spoke, left them all holding their breath on every word he said, and I felt inadequate. He was the stupid little ninth-grader who swooped in and got lucky, and I was just the dorky best friend who wasn't really more than a shadow next to him, undeserving of attention from someone so much more notable, and that was how things were going to be unless I took action, and when I did finally do something about it, I got more credit for it than I ever could have dreamed, so I stuck with it, and it kind of became my thing.

So, I've got my thing and he's got his, and we intersect, but it doesn't quell the want, the desire burning deep in me. It's mostly about being the head honcho of Cinema Club, having that kind of power over the thing I love most, but that can't be all of it, because I'd want to die, too, if Charlie ever took a bullet. He's my favorite thing about being where I am, in this era, in this town, in this high school.

Is it sexual?

Yeah, it might just be.

Because I have to admit that I think about him way more than I should. I want to be the everything to him that he is to me. I want to be the everything that he is to everyone. But, more than any of that, I want him to wait until everyone's left Cinema Club, pick me up, lay me out on the desk, and fuck me until I'm screaming so loud that he has to throw a hand over my mouth to shut me up. I want to go to an empty movie theater and be dragged by the hand behind him as we walk up the aisle, then sit down next to him and beat him off and leave his cum for the poor kid who has to come in and clean the place up. The night before he leaves for college, I want to him to cite the fact that we'll be going long-distance as an excuse to be extra rough and destroy me to the point that he still feels the wooziness of his climax the day he graduates.

I want all of that, but I also want to know what it's like to live a day as Charlie Walker, strange as it may seem when I know he hates his life.

And, really, he hates it mostly because of Kirby. She's so ungrateful that it breaks me to try to comprehend it.

As much as I try to distract myself from it, the fact that I have sexual fantasies about Charlie is more than enough proof that it _is_ indeed a sexual thing. I mean, I know I'm gay. I'm the gayest guy I've ever met; I don't think I've even had a _moment_  where I liked girls, let alone a whole phase. As far back as nine or so, it's always been three major pillars: movies, tech, and giving an oil massage to _What's Eating Gilbert Grape_ -era Johnny Depp. Cinema Club is an extension of the first interest, my vlog is an extension of the second, and I guess my obsession with Charlie makes up the third.

Things are pretty great the way they are, but I can't help but wish for more on both of my fronts. I don't want to be vice president of Cinema Club and I don't want to be Charlie's best friend. I want more.

I guess it's in my character, to be dissatisfied and ambitious. _H_ _all Pass_ was born out of me being dissatisfied and ambitious, and that's the thing that defines me most to others now.

" _Others_ " does not include my Charlie.

* * *

After a Cinema Club meeting, while everyone is whispering about Charlie's lecture on Stephen King adaptations and I'm headed for the door to get some sweet interview action about the outcome of the vote for the weekly movie ( _Dogtooth_ won!), Charlie tugs my sleeve and tells me to stay. The look in his eyes, and the concept of him wanting me alone—still, admittedly, exciting, despite the fact that we hang out so much that Kirby, in true movie buff fashion, used to call us the Bang Bang, after the band in _Brothers of the Head_ , the mockumentary about conjoined twin musicians—makes my heart stumble in my chest, and my stomach flutter, and, so, I do stay, just to see what he has to say.

We make awkward, blatantly fake small talk about Cinema Club for a few minutes, allowing the others to disperse. I ask him what inspired his lecture (I already know) and let him yap into the camera. A lot of the time, it's practically a given that I know what Charlie's thinking, and, right now, I can tell he has a secret to drop, and I have to lie in wait.

Trevor pops in once in a blue moon despite not actually being part of Cinema Club. He's basically a pariah now, both to the teachers and to our friend group, after a certain locker room incident not too long ago. I know he's good deep down, under his prickly and abrasive exterior and his fractured relationship with, like... everyone, pretty much, but it's hard to believe it when I swear he's staying here on purpose just because he knows it'll piss us off based on the energy in the room, which is now quiet and empty, minus us three.

When I peer back at him to see if he's gone, he gives us a strange look, cocked eyebrow, sort-of smirk. Then he walks away. I shrug internally, because that's Trevor for you, and look at Charlie again.

Charlie's eyes follow Trevor out of the room. He waits in silence for a few moments before he gives me a look that says he wants me off _Hall Pass_. It's not really anything panicked or worried or otherwise indicative of wanting privacy, but when you know Charlie as well as I do, you can read into everything he says.

He tells me he'll be coming by to pick me up sometime tonight, since he knows I don't have any plans. He tells me not to bring my headset, and he tells me, too, that he has a surprise for me.

I don't know what the surprise is, but my lizard brain and my left brain are now in a horribly vicious battle against each other, the wishful suspicion that he might be confessing something _special_  to me grappling reason and logic with its long, jagged talons and ripping it open until its guts spill over the grass like pink ribbons.

He's got a surprise, and, yeah, I might be expecting a bit too much.

But I wouldn't really call it expecting. If it isn't fulfilled, I won't be disappointed, because disappointment requires some kind of hope, and hope is something that gets drained pretty thin when your name is Robbie Mercer.

* * *

I get his text an hour or two after it gets dark. I guess he meant _tonight_  when he said tonight. Like, literally after dark. During the night.

Mom snores like a pig with a lung issue and my stepdad's working another double shift at the hospital, so I'm homeward bound. I shut my laptop and head outside, and Charlie's there, waiting for me in his car. Through the faint light of his headlights, I see him wave—is _dorkily_  a word? Whatever, I coined it. It's sweet and charming, in a weird way, and it fills me with the hope I didn't have until now that, maybe, something might happen between us.

The lights are bright enough that I can see the oleanders in front of the porch. They're chasing the tail end of their bloom. Usually, they go from about spring to early fall, and it's September, almost October, so it's about time for the flowers to fade. But no one would ever know that by looking at them. There they are, bright and white and gorgeous, even to the end.

It's kind of ironic that something so beautiful can be so deadly. It's certainly not what you'd really expect. The entire plant is so poisonous that there's an old urban legend about a family roasting hot dogs over a fire with oleander branches, eating them, and succumbing to the poison. It's fascinating.

But I'm not one to leave Charlie waiting. Not in these circumstances. I walk down the steps and climb into his car, trying my hardest to conceal my excitement.

Charlie takes me out of town, onto a dirt side road, and, when we're a few miles out, he tugs a plastic bag filled with something dark out of his pocket and shakes it around like it's a Polaroid picture and his name is André 3000. He tells me it's weed he mixed with tobacco. I tell him that he's found the right virgin to smoke up with.

And he says that he's pretty sure Trevor learned nothing from what happened to him.

So _that's_  why Trevor had his eye on us back at Cinema Club. He's Charlie's dealer, or at least the guy who hooked Charlie up with a dealer. Funny how things work like that.

Charlie pulls over toward the ditch and rolls the windows down so we can light up in his car, and though he never tells me, I assume the plan is to sleep there for the night and go home when we're less high. And I expect us to get at least somewhat stoned considering how hard we're going at this, but by the time he's flipped on the air conditioning to clear the rest of the smoke and we've snuffed out the ends of our spliffs in the ashtray he hides in the glove box, we're not just somewhat stoned, but _really_ stoned, enough to be arguing intensely over the remake of _Prom Night._

It's heated; I can't know what the argument actually is about even as I'm having it because I'm high and all I remember is that we both hate that movie with a burning passion so explosive that it could be a scene from something Michael Bay made, but, because of the differing opinions, we both end up inches away from each other, hissing about Brittany Snow and terrible clichés. I breathe his hot, stale air, sweet with the reek of cannabis, until I'm woozier than the weed itself has made me. Charlie growls about something and follows it up with stupid laughter, and then I snap back at him without even thinking about what it is I'm supposed to be saying, and suddenly, he's leaned up closer to me than he's _ever_  been, and we shared a sleeping bag on a camping trip once.

Then, saying nothing at all, his husky breaths heavy, he pulls me into a kiss, probably just to shut me up, and I lose any sense of the night except for that.

We get a lot further than I expect. Tongue, Charlie opening the hump between the seats to get our bodies closer, hands all over each other. I end up reaching into his underwear and stroking him off, and he grabs my cock, too, and, high as I am, I'm reminded again of what happened to Trevor, with him and Jenny Randall getting caught in the locker room after hours smoking joints while he rammed his dick up her ass. But I don't care about Trevor Sheldon beyond the fact that he's, on a good day, a reliable source of drama, so when we see the flashing rave lights of a police car pulling up beside us, I'm more disappointed than relieved that I have to zip back up.

I'm aware Sheriff Riley isn't exactly the best cop in the world just from what Kirby said about his technique from her many experiences being pulled over for speeding, but I'm terrified of his entire force anyway, because Charlie just got his acceptance letter from Tisch in New York not a month ago, and Trevor's already lost his own scholarship for his little marijuana-fueled stunt. They say the fear of the unknown makes horror stronger, and I guess it's true, because I'm not sure how the police found us—I suppose that I might have seen the lights of another car passing by, but I was probably too busy with Charlie and too high to notice proper—and it's scaring me even more than the prospect of us getting arrested.

I consider it a consequence not of us being suspicious and shady as hell, but of me finally submitting to my feelings for him, and as Sheriff Riley himself strides up to Charlie's open window, I vow that I won't let myself into this position again. Besides, I doubt Charlie would do anything like what he just did sober. The way he stiffens in his seat next to me as soon as he's sure his fly is shut could be because he knows he's going to be in big trouble, or it could be because he realized what he just did to me and that I was totally okay with it happening, and I'm going to be safe and bet it was the latter.

Maybe he won't even want to be my friend after this, if he remembers this at all. Me crushing on him might hit a little too close to home, and now that we've gotten to third base, it'll stay in his mind forever, that he did that, a constant reminder of what I feel for him.

But it's not time to worry about that. Sheriff Riley shines a flashlight into the car; Charlie shoots me a glance, and I can see the terror in his bloodshot eyes. It might be the first time I've ever seen him scared. Movies don't get to someone who's both experienced with them and freakishly laid-back. Then Charlie looks back out the driver's side window, and I swallow the lump in my throat and smile weakly in an attempt to seem casual. As with most things I do, I'm pretty sure it bombs dramatically.

I expect the sheriff to ask us to get out of the car right away, and he does. I open the door and stumble out onto the very edge of the ditch with unsure, unsteady steps. Charlie follows and comes face-to-face with the sheriff.

But it's not routine from there. I walk around the side of the car to stand next to Charlie, still a little more proud of him than I should be, and Sheriff Riley just asks if we need any help. Charlie tells him that we're fine.

There's a knowing look on Sheriff Riley's face. At first, I think it's because of the smell of the marijuana and how disheveled Charlie looks, with every bit of white in his eyes the color of bad fake blood and his typically well-groomed hair all frizzy and the top buttons of his shirt undone where he didn't notice I was opening them in hopes he'd let us get a little more creative than just using our hands, but when Sheriff Riley tells us to have a good night and gets back in his car, I realize he was checking in on us for a different reason, and a reason he was completely justified in pursuing us for. I guess the car that drove by, the one I figured was just a weird hallucination, saw our silhouettes through the window and decided to call the police on us, and since the sheriff wasn't busy in such a shitty small town in the middle of the night, he was the one who answered the call of two stupid gays having sex in a car parked on a side road a few miles outside Woodsboro.

And I'm ashamed that someone found out about me and Charlie, but I'm way more relieved, enough to make up for it, that Charlie escaped such a close call.

I resist the urge to kiss Charlie on the cheek when the sheriff's car pulls away. As far as I'm concerned, that was embarrassing, and I don't want to risk it again. I care about Charlie a lot, but it's not about his safety, not really. It's my own self-image and I fucking know it.

Charlie drives me home. I know he shouldn't be driving, but I'm so high that I'm not exactly a candidate either, and the thing I need right now, after what just happened, is to be away from him, so I stay quiet and look out the window. He says nothing between being stopped by the sheriff and when he drops me off, and I think it's because he's just realized how disgusting what we just did was and he's so angry at me for not stopping him that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore.

Regardless, I can't shake how hot it gets me, thinking about what we did together in that car, and when I'm lying in bed a few hours later, as dawn kisses the sky outside, I slip my hand under the sheet and jerk myself off imagining what could have been. It's not normal, not really, but nothing about me is, so I don't see the problem in sobbing in guilt the entire time, stopping for about six seconds so I can climax, and then crying myself to sleep. It's what closet boys do. We curl up and cry not because we're scared of being weird, but because we're scared other people might find out, and one of the worst terrifying, stressful things that could happen when you record every breath is to end up having to hide a secret that big. I've come to accept myself, come to accept that it's something I've just been born to deal with, but I'm upset that I might have rubbed off onto Charlie and shattered our relationship forever, and I'm mortified that someone knows about it all who isn't Charlie or me, and just like almost everyone in my position, I'm absolutely fucking destroyed even by the sheer possibility that any of this could get out.

And even after coming so close, I, Robbie Mercer, Woodsboro's favorite vlogging virgin, remain just that—a virgin.

I continue the next day like nothing happened, hoping and praying the sheriff is more of a comedic stereotype than I think he is and that Charlie didn't remember as much as he probably did. Charlie never mentions it again, but when we see each other that first time, it's unspoken but palpable in the air that what happened is still heavy in our minds. I mean, he was high. I was high, too, but I didn't need to be high to enjoy him pouring me out in his car and fucking me until I came all over him, what I'm sure would have happened if Sheriff Riley hadn't popped in.

But Charlie's straight. He just messed around, experimental, because he wasn't sober, like Trevor. I'd even argue that Trevor had it worse off, because his stupid mistake destroyed his life and his relationship with Jill. Charlie's mistake hasn't had a chance to hurt anything yet, and it may never, if I can exercise the one skill my webcast hasn't taught me and keep my mouth shut.

I manage even though I don't know how.

And I'm not even the only one who does it.

* * *

Here's a list of things I considered impossible at one point: Charlie ever touching me below the belt, someone trying to reboot the original Woodsboro killings, and Sheriff Riley's wife, _the_ Gale Weathers, getting stabbed at _our_  fucking party.

Of course, all those things have now happened, and I'm pretty sure my feeble grip on reality has finally snapped.

While I'm watching from a distance in complete horror the sheriff crouching over his wounded wife, the gunshots still ringing hot in my ears, Charlie comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder, and it's the closest thing to an admission out of him that I've seen in what seems like forever. By an admission, I'd like to say I mean an admission of wrongdoing in hosting Stab-a-Thon despite current events, but not really. We both knew what would happen if we hosted this party, and we went forward with it anyway because, secretly, I think we both wanted to see the chaos of our favorite film franchise up close and personal. But, really, by an admission, I mean an admission that he loves me, that he cares about me, that he wants to make sure I'm okay in the face of what's going down here in front of us. An admission that I'm his real best friend instead of, like, some geeky idiot he keeps around because he can't find anyone as obsessed with movies as me.

I don't expect Charlie to tell me that he has feelings for me or he wants me safe or that he hopes I'm handling this all well, but, when he doesn't, I feel kind of... bitter about it, because I know he'd do that for Kirby if he could track her down. I'm just his sloppy seconds, either plus or minus the sex depending on if we count what happened when we got stoned together, and we both know it.

But he tells me something, even if it's not what I want to hear, and it's that we're getting out of here before the sheriff puts us in custody.

I ask him where we're going. He says anywhere but here, but there's a look in his eyes that tells me he knows full well where we're going to end up and just doesn't want to say it in public. I like to think I'm good at knowing what he's thinking, and in this case, I am, because when we sneak outside, he whispers in my ear that we're going to Kirby's for an afterparty.

It's the worst news I've heard all night, and Gale _motherfucking_ Weathers just got stabbed right in the same barn where we were hosting the party our reputations rely on.

I don't let the ride over be silent. I like riding in his car too much for that. It allows me to be alone with him, hidden from the world, and that far outweighs the anxiety of driving on a dark road at night in the aftermath of an event that technically made us accessories to a crime. And I'm pretty sure being alone with Charlie is the only thing that could slow my anxiety.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Because we talk about what will happen to us, and if we'll get arrested, and the future of Stab-a-Thon, because we always thought that we'd pass on the tradition to whoever took on Cinema Club when we graduated and now the future of our pet event is in jeopardy, but, most importantly, I bring up that, even though his name is written all over Stab-a-Thon as brightly as mine is, I'll do whatever I can to protect him, including sacrificing myself. If it means he walks free, I'll go to prison for the rest of my life. If it means he gets to live, I'll fight back against Ghostface and die. I'd even confess to the actual murders to keep him safe if it didn't cast such a dark shadow over horror geeks.

When I share this all with him, his distinctive eyes fill with some emotion I can see through the faint light of the dashboard but can't place as something I'm familiar with. I take it as some combination of gratitude and surprise that someone cares about him that much when Kirby certainly doesn't—

Well, she does now. She's been flirting with him in every conceivable direction ever since Jenny and Marnie died. Kirby might look at Charlie like she lives and breathes the fucking guy, but she'll never know what it's really like to need him. She'll never, ever know what it's like to look up to him the way I do, and she'll never know what it's like to feel that he's the only thing keeping her life together, like I do right now. He's so brave and calm even though everyone knows the police are probably looking for us, and Kirby is confident enough that she doesn't at all needthat source of constant reassurance, not the way I do.

But I'm happy for Charlie anyway, because I love him and think he's great and want him to get the girl in the end because I believe, more than anything, that he deserves it. Fuck, I want to _be in his body_  so I can know what it's like to get the girl, because I know fully that the night we spent together in his car was a fluke and that I'll never have anyone for myself.

After he takes a silent moment to process all I've said, Charlie, profile illuminated in the faint glow of the headlights, says in a shaky voice that, as cool as this is, that we've now become entangled in the plot, Gale being attacked at our party means we're now at risk, and we could be killed off at any time. And that's discouraging, and worrying, but he promises me that we'll survive, that we'll make it through to the end. He _promises_  that I'll live, and he _promises_  that he will, too, and he _promises_ that everything will turn out fine.

I don't believe him, and it might only be wishful thinking, but I wonder if he loves me, since he's taking this kind of time to make sure I'm not upset. Then I remember that we're headed for Kirby's house, and I become aware once more that he doesn't love me. He never has, and never will. Not in the way I want him to. And his words do little to reassure me outside of blind faith.

Charlie and Kirby end up tossing horror trivia back and forth in her living room. It's disrespectful to the situation we've found ourselves in, but it's also kind of cute that he's found himself someone so much like him, and I only intervene because I'm jealous that he never looks at me the way he looks at Kirby, even though she's just a female version of me, minus the webcast, which I only started because I had to prove myself as being worthy of him.

And then Trevor shows up out of nowhere, probably to kill us or give Charlie some more weed or fuck Jenny Randall's embalmed corpse, and all holy chaos rains down over Woodsboro, and it's pretty much all I can do to make sure Charlie and Kirby end up together no matter my conflicted feelings about them.

I dismiss myself to the deck with a bottle of liquor not because I'm upset about what happened at Stab-a-Thon, but because part of me resents what's going to happen here and doesn't want to see it and another part wants to give them a little privacy, not that it's really privacy if I'm going to watch them from outside. I bring the alcohol because I'm going to need it.

Everybody knows "Mr. Brightside" because it's like, one of those songs you're born knowing the lyrics to. I think I've only heard it a handful of times, but I could recite the entire thing by heart, and, now, it's one of the only things in my conflicted, exhausted mind, how relatable it is right now. I should be partying, watching _Stab_ , having a good time, and here I am trying to find solace in alcohol and streaming as my existence crumbles around me and, more importantly, the love of my life is stolen away. We both know what we did together was a temporary thing, and that Kirby will always take precedence over me, being a girl and Charlie's main priority since ninth grade, but... it hurts. It hurts more than anything else, and my stomach is throbbing, and though I'm sure it's still a possibility that they might get through the night without either of them making a move, and everything's all in my head, I don't want to try to get to morning without being drunker than I've ever been, even if it means dying, because it might have just been one night, but I love Charlie more than anything and I'm conflicted about whether or not I want him to kiss Kirby. Yeah, right now, "Mr. Brightside" has never had more meaning, because here I am unsure and rambling and sick and jealous and watching Charlie slip away from me.

And maybe dying is what I'm meant to do, because where do I have to go from here? Stab-a-Thon is never happening again, my Charlie doesn't feel for me what I feel for him, my website is as good as dead, and I'm going to prison. That's all three things I live for, demolished, and me, too.

I don't know what to do, now, so I do what I did when I didn't know what to do about Charlie's popularity four long years ago and get out my camera and go wandering. I'm drunk and sad and scared and it's all I can do to keep from breaking down.

Part of me expects to be stabbed, and another part of me is surprised when I walk straight into Ghostface and have to surrender my biggest secret to try to stay alive for Charlie.

It doesn't work.

So when I hear voices, I force myself toward them despite the pain burning in my body, and I warn them through the surge of hot blood welling in my throat from my torn lung, so that they'll find Charlie, and help him, and stay alive themselves. Then I can't stay upright anymore, and the last thing I see before I faint is Kirby, who should practically be my nemesis given the events that have transpired, and, like every other day of my life, I don't know how to feel.

* * *

Evidently, I either passed out from the blood loss and somehow regained consciousness, or hit my head when I fell down, because I wake up some amount of time later to see Charlie standing over me.

Oh my God.

He's come to save me. But I know it's too late for me to be saved, and I'm so, so sorry he has to see this.

I rasp his name. A gurgle rumbles in my throat as a rush of blood churns in my sinuses, leaking out of my mouth, my nose, oozing down my jaw. And my impending mortality seems to trigger something in me, trigger my need to say something else and trigger the loss of the inhibition that would have kept me from saying it. I tell him to run, that they'll get him... and that I love him more than life itself.

Charlie blinks. He replies, whispers my name, but it doesn't sound near as worried or as full of grief as I expect it to be, even from someone as subtle and laid-back as him. There's a pause that shakes the earth beneath my crumpled body.

Then he tells me that I was supposed to be dead by the time he came back.

The air hitches in my throat and I can't force out a response. But it doesn't really hurt anything, not the way he hurt me. It's not like I know what to say. Everything he told me in the car was a lie, and everything I told him was just proof of how good he is at being deceitful.

As I struggle for my next breaths only so I can see what he does next and not because I want to live in a world where he's betrayed me, my fingers splay out against the wood of the porch, and my vision starts to blur. A convulsion rolls up my spine, jerking my limbs in an explosion of agony as the flesh around my wounds flexes, but, despite death clearly and directly asking me to come along, I keep looking long enough to see him disappear out of sight behind me, and I keep holding out long enough to feel him roll up my shirt and jacket, swipe his hands around my wound to take my blood, and pull my clothes back down. Then he comes back around to my side so I can see him and all the blood he's smeared on his hands and forehead and clothes for some vile purpose probably relating to his plan.

He stares at me for a moment and tells me he needs to finish me off, for the sake of the reboot. Then he kicks me hard in the ribs.

I feel nothing, numb to his cruelty in the face of all the other pain already surging through me. But it weakens me; I clamp my eyes shut. When I do, he tells me that it's a shame I won't be around to see his remake, because he's sure I would have liked it.

And as my breathing slows, and as I hear his footsteps fade away as he walks down the stairs into the grass, and as I'm left to wonder if, despite what he said, he didn't try to finish me off for real because he really loves me deep down and not because he knows I'm dying, as all that happens, I remember something, and that memory becomes a realization.

...He's an oleander, just like the ones in front of my house. I love him and he poisons me. I grew him in my garden, faithfully tending to the weeds and watering him when rain was short, and I did everything in my power to protect his beauty until the day someone ground his petals up into my tea and killed me. He is majestic, the greatest thing I've ever laid eyes on, to the point where, before he cut me open and left me here to bleed out, I wanted to not only be like him, but _be_ him. But I ingested him, and he was deadly despite how innocuous his allure made him seem. He was deadly all along.

Just like an olean—


End file.
